Ana Victoria Morales is the New Talent winner of the Book Covers Category. Here, she tells us more about her award-winning project and future plans.

It was a self initiated project where I wanted to do a mockup of a book cover including lettering. I didn’t want to pick a famous book so I just chose a beautiful quote that sounded like a book title and went with that!

Brief

To create a book cover with illustration and lettering where the title is a quote of your choosing

Research

I wanted to create a nature/jungle scene, so I looked for quotes that talked about animals or nature and I chose All good things are wild and free by Henry David Thoreau. Then I looked for animals which are found in the jungle, specifically those who could stand on hang off branches since I had an idea for the concept already.

Materials

My notebook for sketches, I like to use a mechanical pencil for first sketches. Then I move on to a red and blue color pencil to make the final sketch. For the lettering I start with the mechanical pencil as well, and then because I need a wide nib I use a calligraphy marker to test out the lettering. If I make any mistakes with the marker I use whiteout to cover it and draw on top

Process

I sketched on my notebook the background a few times with a rough idea of where the text was going to go. Then separately I sketched the lettering also a few times until I landed on something that worked.

Challenges

The flow of the lettering was the hardest as it’s almost like a puzzle. I didn’t want it to be boring or predictable. I like when lettering works have all these crazy flourishes and ways to connect letters and details as well as combining typefaces

Insights

That lettering is not as easy as it looks. The combination of typefaces, how much can you push the details and decorations are really not straightforward and there’s a lot of sketching and tracing involved

Distractions

I was working on 2 other projects at the same time as this one that all needed to be done on the same day. It was an intense week

Numbers

on procreate it took 4h 55m. The sketching phase took about 3h probably and the research about other 2h

Reflections

I think my procreate flow has changed quite a bit since then, but looking back at the time-lapse it still looks great and I didn’t use nearly as many layers as I would do now.

Advice

I am still a student so there are many things I don’t feel like I know, but what I keep seeing is that the work that you love, regardless of challenges, trends, etc, is the work people will praise you for the most and will be attracted to the most

Future

Continue building my portfolio both commercial and children’s book to hopefully get an agent next year

Dream Commission

Anything Disney, or anything in the beauty industry. Those are 2 very different poles but simply because of the fact that I love Disney and I really like skin care and make-up and would love to see my illustrations on fancy/funky packaging

Favourite thing to draw

Girls

Workspace

I work from home, from my little desk (not so little as it takes almost half of the room) in my bedroom. I prioritise office space so my desk, storage, supplies, etc take up a lot of room and I would say it’s half office half bedroom at this point

Thanks

Thank you for choosing my work. I find it so funny how a work I did on a whim, just because I wanted to do a lettering job that looked like a book cover that nobody asked for, has gotten all this recognition. I think that proves that what you do with passion, others can tell and are attracted to it.